Holiday shopping: Croatians spent record amount of money in December

Croatians have spent record 14,85 billion kuna in December, which is an increase of 7,1 percent compared to the last year when 13,79 billion kuna was spent, shows the data of the Tax Administration of the fiscal system – Poslovni.hr reports.

-This increase of over one billion kuna is in line with the estimates of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce. The wage erosion and their growth through tax reform acted on the optimism of citizens and also on consumption. We also had a good tourist season, which also helped this year's record-breaking December - said Director of Trade Sector HGK Tomislava Ravlic as Poslovni.hr writes.

If the current dynamics of the real growth of retail trade continues, next year the level before crisis could be reached, and in 2020 we could overcome that level. The estimate is based on the growth in retail trade traffic, which is steadily increasing since 2014, and it was 4.2 percent higher in the first ten months of this year than in the same period of 2017.

According to the results of last year's Chamber of Commerce research, the largest number of respondents spent between 100 and 500 kuna on holiday gifts (39%), followed this year by those who spent between 500 and 1000 kuna (31%). The upper limit of 1000 kuna exceeded 9% of the respondents, while 21 percent of respondents have spent less than 100 kuna or nothing. Almost 40% put toys beneath the Christmas tree, followed by cosmetics (37%), footwear and clothing (36%) and food products (25%).